Yesterday morning, an old friend sent me a text: “Did you hear the news?”
I always get a pit in my stomach when I hear that. “No,” I emailed back. “What happened?”
What happened, of course, was Germanwings 9525. At the time all that was known was that an Airbus 321 carrying 150 people had crashed into the Alps. Soon enough details began to emerge, but how strange they were: a 24-year-old aircraft, en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, had climbed to its crusing altitude of 38,000 feet and then, within a matter of minutes, begun to descend at 3000 to 4000 feet per minute, apparently fairly steadily and while remaining on course, until it crashed eight minutes later into the French Alps. The flight crew issued no distress call.
I’d never heard of anything like it, but as the conversation developed online, some parallels emerged. Foremost was the case of LH1829, which took off from Bilbao last November and began an uncommanded descent of some 4000 feet per minute after the flight management system became confused by frozen angle-of-attack sensors.
In that case the pilots communicated with technicians on the ground and figured out how to solve the problem before a great deal of altitude was lost, but perhaps yesterday’s pilots had tried to tackle the issue by themselves and gotten too absorbed by the challenge to realize how much altitude they were losing, a la Eastern Air Line Flight 401?
Some speculated that a sudden decompression might have caused the tragedy. There have certainly been incidents in which aging, inadequately repaired aircraft have suffered catastrophic failure of their pressure hulls, leading to destruction of the plane, but those don’t generally look like this–the plane either breaks up at altitude or the pilots are able to don oxygen masks and keep flying the plane and communicating, if only for a while.
Another possibility–one hesitates to raise it in today’s climate of fear–is that a hijacker attempted to take control of the cockpit. I don’t think we can rule this out, either.
At this point, frankly, none of these scenarios make a great deal of sense, and I think the overall sentiment among people who spend a lot of time looking at this sort of thing is bafflement. “I’m at a loss,” one veteran 777 pilot emailed me yesterday. I think that about sums it up. Hopefully, the recovered cockpit voice recorder will provide some clarity.
UPDATE 3/26/2015: At a press conference in Marseille today prosecutor Brice Robin revealed that, according to audio recordings recovered from the Cockpit Voice Recorder, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit and initiated the descent that led to the plane’s crash into the Alps. “He took this action, for reasons we still don’t know why,” Robin said. “We can only deduce he destroyed the plane. He voluntarily allowed the plane to lose altitude. I think the victims only realised at the last moment because on the recording you only hear the screams on the last moments.”
Given the latest information, the default scenario going forward will be that Lubitz commandeered the plane in order to commit suicide. However, I think it’s important to resist the tempation to consider the case closed. Indeed, the investigation has only just begun, and hopefully a good deal of information remains to be pieced together (though hope seems to be fading that the Flight Data Recorder will be usable). Though the weight of evidence may seem overwhelming, I still find it strange that a suicidal pilot would prolong his own agony by descending at a relatively modest 3000-4000 fpm instead of just pointing the nose straight down, as the pilots did in the other apparent suicide crashes such as EgyptAir 990 and SilkAir 185.
The case most similar to Germanwings 9525 is probably that of LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, which crashed in 2013 while en route from Mozambique to Angola. The plane had climbed to its cruise altitude of 38,000 feet when it began to descend at a rate of about 6000 feet per minute. Six minutes later, it impacted the ground, killing all aboard. Data from the black boxes revealed that the captain locked the co-pilot out of the cockpit and changed the autopilot settings to initiate a descent.
I haven’t seen any reporting explaining what might have motivated the captain to do this.
Meanwhile, the Guardian is reporting that Lubitz had 630 hours flying time (which is very low) and had been with the company since 2013. “Lubitz was also described by neighbours as being friendly and pursuing his dreams ‘with vigour’. One told the local newspaper, the Rhein Zeitung that he had kept fit through running, ‘How often we saw him jogging past our house.’”
@Jill, Troubling… baffling… not sure what to make of it.
@Nihonmama, apparently there’s a French source as well.
@Jeff,
this is even more troubling:
https://vatstats.net/flights/1802506
My link above: what kind of page is that???
Feels like a sick joke….
Sorry, that I even linked this vatstats page. It’s taken from a simulator game and someone made a sick joke. We’re all jumpy. And hopefully we will get more info soon.
There are six nuclear sites about 10 minute flight time from crash site. Also a Mirage 2000 should have been in striking distance to take care of any terror intentions.
Looks like it fits into suicidal patterns: sunny day, resolve, the person feels power, the kick from the other pilot leaving the cockpit, a spontaneous decision, the opportunity to act immediately, only 8 minutes to the end, no pain. Needs to be estab lished from research in the Crew lives, but you see a tremendous difference to the MH370 scenario.
Here you have the acting person not bothering about preparation, comms, technical stuff, planning and everything was over after minutes.
Contrary to this is MH370 with all kind of preparation, planning and technical stuff about comms involved, and a presumed period of 6 hours to execute the plan. So MH370 does not show a suicide pattern.
Remarkable in that we are straining for credible info – bit like another plane we know of. The media is a beast these days.
@CosmicAcademy, good comment.If the story proves to be true, it shows indeed a very different pattern to what has probably happened onboard mh370.
@Matty, but we’re not better.
Again I apologize to everybody for having provided a link in my comment at 07:10am to a simulator page where someone made a sick joke. I was simply trying to find out who the crew members were.
But it’s telling that people do come up with this stuff. The atmosphere is really a bit poisoned right now.
Found this on a blog …
“In order to accept any explanation that does not involve deliberate and malicious human intervention, one must believe in no fewer than four coincidences:
1. The captain happened to leave the cockpit.
2. The copilot happened to have some sort of medical emergency that prevented him from letting the captain back into the cockpit, but not until after
3. the copilot had overridden the passcode system by which the captain could have opened the cockpit door.
4. While the captain was locked out and the copilot was incapacitated, the computer happened to malfunction, directing the plane to begin a controlled descent that ended on the side of a mountain.
I’ll let Occam’s razor do the rest.”
Littlefoot – I’d say that in a tricky case they will have trouble staying ahead of the crowd these days.
Michael R – I thought Captains left the cockpit normally? An eight minute suicide descent? Totally weird.
@Michael R, good quote.
@Matty, German prosecutors have confirmed the NYT story by now, but it’s not clear,yet, which pilot was locked out.
French Prosecutor’s press conference, in Marseilles, confirms that the CVR recording details enough to confirm that the first officer intentionally initiated 4U9525’s descent.
TEx
The news are tumbling in right now. Apparenty the first officer locked himself in, initiated the descent, but was breathing normally in the cockpit. He didn’t respond to demands to open the door. The most likely scenario is pilot suicide now, or as the Guardian quoted the French prosecutor: “The first officer initiated the descent in order to destroy the plane”.
Here’s the link:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/march/26/germanwings-crash-investigation-ptress-conference-live-updates-4u9925
It’s interesting how powerful a taboo suicide by plane is. Some very respected German news outlets are still peddling theories of how this could’ve been an accident, because the German prosecutor said, he hesitates to call it suicide. But if one reads the full quote it becomes very clear what the prosecutor meant: it’s too harmless to call this a suicide since the co-pilot didn’t just kill himself but he also took 155 people along with him. And that should be called bz the correct name: murder.
Hi, everyone.
I hate to be the one to state this, but, given the facts as they are presented (and without knowing if there is more information available), it would appear that the French investigator/prosecutor is over-reaching a bit in stating that the First Officer intentionally destroyed the aircraft. As presented, there is nothing in the facts that confirms a pilot murder-suicide, as there wasn’t any communication from the FO following the Captain being locked out of the flight deck. The FO could just have easily have been rendered unconscious – although one can’t help but wonder what sort of systems glitch prohibited the Captain from reentering the flight deck.
Takeaways:
1. Reinforced doors are not indicated in all circumstances. Once again, perhaps the threat of ‘terrorism’ has been overplayed with tragic consequences as the result.
2. A pilot suicide process consuming eight minutes at a medium rate of descent? This is questionable and generally lacks precedent, I would think or as far as I know (I could be mistaken). No matter, what is perhaps more important/enlightening is to consider whether a seven-hour suicide process in the case MH370 would be all that probable; I remain more-or-less convinced not.
3. There will be people barking at the investigator/prosecutor within hours for putting this on the FO at this point in the investigation; he could be forced to remove himself from his role within a couple of news cycles (if these still even exist).
I think there is a clue in the specific choice of end points and descent profile. If this was a suicide for purely personal reasons, I would expect a different descent profile. This descent profile here suggests a very deliberate, planned intent to maximize the destruction by literally flying straight and level into a wall of rock. This strikes me as a deliberate, well planned act to terrorize the world for political purposes, or possibly to punish the airline for some unknown grievance, or ???. But it does not sound like a guy who was just having a bad day (or year) and decided to commit suicide while killing 149 others.
630 hours of TT seems very light for an A320 FO. Do airlines normally advance a pilot to A320 FO position with so few hours? Any commercial pilots care to comment?
@Everyone,
We’re getting a heap of more detailed info here in Germany right now. And I’m afraid to say there’s little room for doubt: the co-pilot was heard on the audio – which is apparently of good quality – as he is initiating deliberately the descent. His breathing pattern is that of a conscious person, when he doesn’t react to demands for opening the door. There was apparently no indication whatsoever about something being wrong with the plane.The passengers weren’t screaming and they weren’t agitated – only at the end of the flight you can hear them. So apparently the plane wasn’t pitching or rolling.
We will hear more details shortly.
If the authorities aren’t blatantly lying to us it’s hard to come up with another solution than that the co-pilot did it deliberately.
WHY he did it is a different story. If that was suicide cum murder or if there was a terror background after all – we will hear more about it soon.
Victor’s idea that the graph oscillations hint at early trouble are not confirmed. I guess experts have to dive in and explain this possibly troubling detail. I’d like to be sure that everything we have been told so far is true.
By chance I know the little town where the co-pilot grew up very well. I’ve been there many times. I’m from the North of Germany, but I lived for a long stretch in the Rhineland and the town is only a few kilometers away from the place I was living with my parents. Montabaur is one of the most boring places I could possibly imagine… and now the become associated with this…
@Rand
I read this morning that, when using the keypad to enter the cabin, the Captain & FO can still deny entry. Thus, this would prove that he wasn’t incapacitated. He would have to be denying entry while flying.
@ALSM
Agreed
@Everyone
Just because 370 doesn’t fit this pattern doesn’t mean that wasn’t suicide. Crawling into the mind of a mass murderer & trusted pilot, leaves us all with a great sense of….How could he do that? He’s insane of course. “Nobody ever saw it coming” is very common among suicides. Robin Williams is a fine example. 370 was & is a mystery in the making & IMO, the greatest civil aviation mystery of all time, just like he wanted it.
@littlefoot: My graphing of the VS throughout the flight shows that the oscillations were present in both the climbs and the descent. My main point was to warn against using the oscillations during the descent to draw conclusions without also recognizing the oscillations during the climbs. Any analysis needs to explain both the climbs and the descent.
From today’s news, it appears that the oscillations have nothing to do with the crash.
Did anyone catch that there were 3 male passengers from Kazakhstan on board?
@Victor, what you say is probably correct.
We’re getting minute-by-minute descriptions here right now about what is going on onboard the plane according to the audio. Apparently the co-pilot can be heard actively using the blocking mechanism of the door when the captain tries to gain entrance. And the investigators detected signals of distress in the voice of the co-pilot, when he was discussing the landing in Düsseldorf with the captain. It’s chilling to the bone.
ALSM might be right on the money when he says that crashing a plane into a wall of rocks could hint at personal grievances against the airline. We have to remember that Lufthansa and their daughter German Wings are restructuring extensively atm. There were acrimonious pilot strikes for month here. I got caught up in one of them myself when flying from LA to Munich last October. German Wings is to become EuroWings soon, which means the airline personal will get paid less, since the airline is no longer bound to the German tarifs but can apply European tarif system, which pays less.
This: http://www.dpa-international.com/news/international/backgroundvictims-of-the-crash-of-germanwings-flight-4u9525-a-44716129.html
Sorry, guys, if I’m rushing to conclusions, but this is really emotional for me.
It’s so close to home in more that one way…
@littlefoot
My wife has flown that airline many times all over Europe as well & has relatives in Germany that use it too. No need for apologies.
Just like air disasters, there was a culmination of events that brought this on, along with work pressure. Why “they” need to wreck not only their own family, but 149 other families & selfishly murder other pax is beyond me. I’m sure that we’ll hear about in the coming months. And I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I can’t imagine what the FO’s family will be going through.
“Surely Mr. Robin knows something he’s not sharing with the rest of us, or how could he possibly come to the conclusion that “the co pilot wanted to destroy the aircraft”? And yet that is what he is saying based on facts that still suggest other possibilities.” ~@cnegroni
http://t.co/jx2RCf0mKn
To confirm Victor’s innocence…I suggested that the large oscillations in the Vspeed during descent could be the result of PIOs, indicative of an inexperienced pilot flying manually. Victor brought to my attention that the same anomalies were present during the assent on the same flight. The reason for the oscillations is not known, but it could be due to bug in the code that derives the ROC values sent via ADS-B, or it could indicate a faulty sensor. Both of these explanations are very unlikely, but we can find out. Given that we now know that it was a deliberate act by the co-pilot, it is surely not related to the event.
@ALSM, there can be no doubt, that Victor and you rightly pointed to a peculiarity, which had to be considered at the time.I’d still like to know where those oscillations came from.
As it looks now it’s probably not related to the crash.
And you were right on the money from the beginning.
In German tv they’re walking us through every little detail of the audio atm, like the captain going to the bathroom and trying frantically to get in again and the co-pilot blocking the emergency code without saying a word – as well as the conversations of pilot and co-pilot before the flight. I’m sure all the details will be available in English eventually as well. It’s chilling to the bone. And unless we want to believe that all this was cooked up within 24 hours for some nefarious reason, this leaves little room for imagination.
I guess it leaves us with the realization that something like this probably can’t be prevented With 100 percent. If we want hijackers to be unable to get into the cockpit, you always have to accept the possibility that this system could be misused by a lunatic from within. But since those incidents are incredibly rare air security doesn’t suffer noticeably because there are some security gaps which can’t be completely eliminated.
@littlefoot: It is clear that the safeguards for the cockpit door are primarily meant to protect from unauthorized access to the cockpit. It is harder, and arguably was deemed less critical, to protect against one or more of the pilots intentionally causing harm. Perhaps in the wake of this incident this logic will be re-assessed.
“Final frontier for aviation safety is not technology, its human factors and psychology.”
Tim Robinson, Editor in Chief of AEROSPACE
(@RAeSTimR)
Truly a tragic event and my sympathies to all affected by this.
I’m just a layman however I’ve been doing some thinking about how a cockpit door could be re-designed to prevent a tragedy such as this.
Perhaps a door could be devised that keeps all passengers out but at the same time will never allow any one crew member to keep the other crew member out, such as happened in this case. Or barring that, at least allow the captain’s door code to override the first officer’s (or any other possible perps) attempts to manually lock the cockpit door. No system will be perfect but something like that could have made a difference in this case.
Just my thoughts.
hey,
just thinking out loud about this…but is there chance that there was some circumstance where the pilot was actually trying to land the plane somewhere on the mountain, but missed his target?
@Nihonmama:
very sad end; at least it was quick;
without pointing to specific case, I saw interesting article year ago, as part of brainstorming around MH370, but applicable here too:
http://listverse.com/2014/03/20/10-crazy-facts-about-psychopaths/
@Falken:
Thanks for the links. Sad indeed. Below is one of many articles that have been written in recent years about prevalence of psychopathic traits — in this case, in the financial services industry. But it’s by no means limited to that demographic. People with some form of antisocial personality disorder (psychopath or sociopath) are far more ubiquitous in our society than people think.
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/181442700850102272
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEHV7c3VXs
mental illness
As is established by now, the FO interrupted his pilot education in 2009 for a considerable timespan. This interruption seems to have been due to mental issues like depressions. He was nevertheless allowed to continue his career as a pilot and cleared for any health problems.
@Nihonmama – thanks
@Cosmic – mental illness is quite different thing than psychopathy (of several levels), as “soft” psychopaths (from “psycho patology”) are not looking as mentally ill; read the article; its very hard to detect such things often, although article suggests there are ways howto; key is, that people can be in some deep trouble, but its different how they react; thats very sad case, indeed
You wonder how much MH370 was involved in the psychology of this event? I just read that in the US you can’t be alone in the cockpit, another crew member must enter while the pilot is absent. Two in at all times, could become the industry standard.
ALSM: “This strikes me as a deliberate, well planned act to terrorize the world for political purposes”
Here we go again …
@Greg Long,
Well, it was well planned and deliberate. And it might turn out that there is a political dimension as well, since the on-and-off strikes for pilot salaries are still going on. So, ALSM probably wasn’t that far off. Only the international terror angle is apparently absent.
Interestingly all strikes as well as talks about pilot salaries have been suspended for a couple of days.
The German Wings chef said that the co-pilot flew that route several times before. He might’ve gotten the idea in advance that the spot he choose was about right. He also seems to have reset the AP’s crusing altitude to 100ft after the captain left the cockpit, as the “Telegraph” newsticker announced. Interestingly the flightradar24 guys seem to have discovered this tidbit. Those tracking sites seem to play more and more of an important role in air traffic investigations.
Jeff, it’s too bad you’re not on CNN in the aftermath of this latest aviation tragedy. And yes, I am brown-nosing, but doggone it! I enjoy your insight!
News here saying they have made an important find in his residence, taken away for testing? Is that medications, a laptop etc?
@Matty, same news here. One police officer was even identified by name. He said they found something which could turn out to be important, but they have to look into it more.
Did a quick google search, Lufthansa and German wings Pilots Union have been in a bitter dispute with company.. Could be a clue?
From what is known so far, it seems like it was something personal.
Any news from the girlfriend? Read somewhere he had one (if true).
Possible scenario…captain goes to restroom, somehow co-pilot becomes incapacitated, passes out, slumps over causing an input to the flight controls and a descent. Unconscious yet breathing, he doesn’t speak and is nonresponsive to the captain’s pounding on the door or requests to unlock it.
http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.1086/the-co-pilot-of-the-germanwings-airbus-was-a-convert-to-islam.html
Has anyone found a confirmation of these claims?
http://romancatholicimperialist.blogspot.com/2015/03/muslim-convert-co-pilot-andreas-gunter.html